People are talking about cultural work, about enlightenment. But how, who? They want to cultivate, but we aren’t vegetables in a garden. What, are we to grow our way up the columns in the galleries?! It’s absolute drivel. New art, if it does indeed appear, should, with its very first scream, say something to the people.

I arrived to Arkhangelsk gloomy and in terrible grief. Nonetheless, or perhaps because of this, they immediately began trying to arrange a match for me there. They suggested Vava M. as a potential bride—a daughter of a rich fish merchant.
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I have never seen this girl and she has never seen me. This setting up was customary there. It occupied the ladies who had nothing else to do.

This morning, Alesha came by. I spent part of the day in an armchair and part of it in bed. The officer on duty is stationed toward the fore of the house, and a pair of sentinels stand by the front doors. Now this is how one should guard dangerous criminals!
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We cannot find out anything about ourselves. We just sit and pine away.